Thursday, March 06, 2014

2014 book 54

Marie Brennan's A Tropic of Serpents
Boy, all the series books I've been eagerly awaiting have been mildly disappointing this week, including this one. The second in Brennan's Memoirs of Lady Trent (after A Natural History of Dragons) is kind of on the boring side, and also is kind of racist. I don't think that BRENNAN is racist, at least not on purpose, but her overly complicated and confusing world-building presents a historically-accurate racism--except that it's a made-up world! But, I mean, they're CLEARLY in Africa--UGH, this world-building where everything is just like our world but with made-up names and religion and dragons really is annoying this time around. Brennen spends way too much time explaining various cultures--which, actually, fits with the conceit of this novel, but isn't really engaging. (For the record, I do like the narrative voice, I just wish it was talking about something else.) The illustrations don't really help with my accusations of racism, either. Anyway, plot: the main character from the last one travels to Africa with two other people and she eventually sees some dragons and then quickly averts a war. That is honestly all that happens. I like the whole "killing dragons is bad" philosophy, but wow, this was underwhelming after the last one. I want to see more dealing with society stuff, or if not that, more dealing with actual dragons! I mean, get one as a pet or something, at least. B/B-.